Oceans and Coasts

UN’s recognition of safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right recently hit a decade and this makes us ponder even more about the situation in the Sundarbans after the Amphan cyclone. The destruction caused by Amphan in the Sundarbans poses a massive threat to the very right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation of the people living there. Sundarbans, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has an acute shortage of potable water and sanitation and its people are being deprived of their basic needs to a very high degree.

The Amphan cyclone has disfigured the lives of people living in the Sundarbans. Houses have been torn apart, farms have been filled with brackish water making the land unsuitable for farming and betel leaves have been destroyed. People in the Sundarbans are in a life-threatening situation with makeshift shacks to live in and no means to earn a living.

Flood situation in Assam continues to remain grim

UP emerges as the top state in the country to give employment under MGNREGS

While the world has got a reprieve from pollution with emerging wildlife, cleaner air and clearer water bodies during lockdown, Covid-19 might actually be worsening the present water crisis in an inconspicuous manner. The world is still developing more clarity on safeguards that can prevent transmission, treatment and post treatment complications. This uncertainty has led to the haphazard use of natural and manmade resources that has greater environmental consequences than initially assumed.

Unprecedented use of water

Nearly 260 million Indian could be pushed to poverty due to Covid-19: Researchers

A new McKinsey Global Institute report, ‘Climate risk and response: Physical hazards and socioeconomic impacts’, suggests that many assumptions about the potential damage climate risk could cause need to be revisited.

Ensure 100 percent treatment of sewage entering rivers: NGT to authorities

Cyclone Bulbul causes devastation in West Bengal and Odisha

A new research study by Climate Central, a US-based non-profit research group has projected that 300 million people could face annual coastal flooding triggered by climate change by 2050. Scott A Kulp and Benjamin H Strauss, the authors of the study suggest that the choices made today will likely determine whether our planet’s coastlines will even be recognizable, by the middle of the twenty first century.